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court packing
[kawrt pak-ing]
noun
the practice of changing the number or composition of judges on a court, making it more favorable to particular goals or ideologies, and typically involving an increase in the number of seats on the court.
Court packing can tip the balance of the Supreme Court toward the right or left.
U.S. History.an unsuccessful attempt by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937 to appoint up to six additional justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, which had invalidated a number of his New Deal laws.
51Թ History and Origins
Origin of court packing1
Example Sentences
Though court packing has been a topic of discussion for years, Wyden’s bill is the first to propose an expansion since President Joe Biden signaled his weariness with the court's direction.
Unlike court expansion or “court packing,” they wouldn't automatically incentivize escalating partisan warfare:
After first defying the threat, defections from and retirements by members of the conservative majority on the court ultimately allowed the “court packing” plan to die a natural death.
We will effectively return to the early 20th century’s Lochner era, when the Supreme Court repeatedly struck down worker protections and rights for more than 30 years until FDR threatened it with court packing.
“What people know about expanding the court, they associate with Roosevelt and court packing, and I think we need to make the case that, ‘No the court has already been packed,’ and the question is whether there’s action taken to restore balance on the court,” Schiff said in an interview.
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When To Use
On September 22, 2020, searches for court packing increased 23,225% compared to the previous week following the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.The second woman appointed to the Supreme Court, where she served as an associate justice for over 27 years, Ginsburg died from complications caused by metastatic pancreatic cancer at the age of 87.Popularly referred to as “Notorious RBG” for her trenchant dissenting opinions, Ginsburg leaves behind a jurisprudence advancing gender equality and women’s rights—and a liberal legacy that transformed American life and law in her long career as a public servant.In the wake of her passing, the Republican vow to fill her seat despite the precedent they followed not to fill a vacancy in 2016 led some political pundits, journalists, and observers to raise the topic of court packing.Court packing, in the sense of adding more justices to the Supreme Court, has been discussed as one way Democrats might counteract an enduring conservative majority on the court were they to win back the Senate and White House in 2020. This meaning of court packing is historically associated with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's attempt in the late 1930s. However, other efforts to rebalance or manipulate the ideological composition of the court have also been called court packing, historically—most notably by William Rehnquist during the 1984 presidential election cycle. Why was Ginsburg dubbed notorious? How is that word different from infamous? And how does dissent compare to protest? We issue some lexical rulings on the important differences in our articles, “'Infamous' vs. 'Notorious': Why Is There A Difference?” and “'Dissent' vs. 'Protest': Why Choosing The Right 51Թ Matters.”
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